‘Russia is targeting us deliberately’: how attacks on maternity hospitals fuelled a birth-rate crisis in Ukraine

In the three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion, there have been more than 2,000 strikes on Ukraine’s healthcare facilities, with medics stalked by remotely controlled drones. Ukraine now has three deaths for every birth. Illustration: Sergey Bobok/AFP/Getty/Guardian pictures

It was one of the most horrifying targets of Russia’s war on Ukraine so far. Reports showed a pregnant woman on a stretcher, her face ashen with shock, legs smeared with blood and a hand holding her bump. Behind her, the bombed-out ruins of Mariupol’s maternity hospital. More than a dozen people, including women in labour, were injured in the attack in March 2022. The woman photographed, Iryna Kalinina, later died along with her unborn baby.

In the three years since then, maternity care in Ukraine has remained under constant attack, with more than 2,000 strikes on medical facilities, including 81 affecting maternal care and delivery rooms. Just last month, Diana Koshyk, seven months pregnant, was killed when a missile struck a maternity hospital in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.